Dr. Allen Lim, the founder of Skratch Labs, is today’s esteemed podcast philosopher. With his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Lim continues to pioneer new practices in sports physiology and applied training. He is one of the few who will sometimes say that the science is B.S., and that metrics, and the interpretation thereof, constitute only a portion of the overall support system a good coach provides to his or her athletes.
On a personal level, Lim coached Colby through the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, bringing a more scientific approach to the sport of track cycling.
In the second half of the show, food becomes the subject of conversation. Food is often viewed as fuel—and only fuel—by endurance athletes. Lim, author of three books about food and cooking, including The Feed Zone Cookbook: Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes, preaches about eating and the importance of having a good relationship with food.
In Lim’s view, food provides energy not just to power your legs for five-hour rides. Food has chi; and athletes have intuition regarding what and how much food to eat to keep their bodies in balance. The sport-induced eating habits of many athletes can be isolating; Lim, however, understands how food can serve as social fuel, which goes well beyond its role as chemical fuel.
All this and much more in episode 3 of Cycling in Alignment.
Loneliness is a fundamental breach between who one is and who one pretends to be.
– Moustakas
REFERENCES
- Allen Lim’s LUX camp is June 15th to July 15th
- Dr. Allen Lim https://www.doctorallenlim.com
- Skratch Labs https://www.skratchlabs.com/
- Chek Institute https://chekinstitute.com/product/holistic-health-and-performance-for-women-e-learning/
- Dr. Stacy Sims https://www.drstacysims.com/
Episode Transcript
00:13
Welcome to the cycling and alignment podcast, an examination of cycling as a practice in dialogue about the integration of sport and right relationship to your life.
00:25
Greetings digit knots.
Colby Pearce 00:28
Thank you for joining us for another episode of cycling in alignment. Today’s guest is Dr. Ellen Lim, Ace sports physiologist from Boulder, Colorado, the founder of scratch labs, and the author of no less than three books. During our conversation, we cover a wide variety of topics including Ellen’s favorite color, his life’s dream goal or objective and the strengths and limitations of science. Now, activate your auditory meatus and prepare for blast off. This is cycling in alignment.
Colby Pearce 01:16
Dr. Allen thank you so much for joining me on the cycling and alignment podcast. Thank you
Allen Lim 01:21
Colby pierce the influencer of my life.
Allen Lim 01:24
I think you got that backwards buddy. Um, so I wrote down some thoughts. We’ll try to stay near ish that target lately, um, but as I pre disclosed in my notes to you, if we wander off the path and as long as it’s good conversation, then I think we’re okay. Focus, focus, focus, focus. Okay, cool. So some context for those of you in case you don’t know who Dr. Allen Lim is. I think a lot of people do especially listeners of this podcast, but he graduated from CU Boulder Feel free to correct me on any of these details or modify, add, add it as necessary. Add it as a new word. his doctorate in sports fizz,
02:03
fizz from CU Boulder. I think the way the university likes to say it as I graduated from the applied Exercise Science Laboratory has a direction of Dr. William burns in the department of integrative physiology from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a doctorate in philosophy.
Allen Lim 02:20
That sounds so much better than how I said it.
02:23
I don’t I’m glad you I don’t know what that means though. I
Allen Lim 02:26
will, we’ll get to that. You founded scratch labs. This is not in chronological order. You also worked on sports science teams for the tiaa cref team, which I wrote for and kind of ps4 and also kind of started
02:39
in Garmin sharp
Allen Lim 02:40
which I also rode for and directed for and kind of started and Radio Shack which I had nothing to do with but you work for all those teams I’m sure you’ve learned an immense amount. Yeah, about working at the world level and and I did listen to your Mile High TED talk last night and you you spoke a bit about something a concept I’d like to move on. Unpack about your idea that when you, you were struggling a bit with the workload and the travel of working at the World Tour level, which is immense. And then on the other side, you felt that you wanted to leave that world but you struggle to leave that world because of there’s a certain status and certain notoriety and also an addiction to just being around world level athletes. Yeah, whether you’re being one or working with them, it’s,
Allen Lim 03:29
it’s an addiction to identity. Mm hmm. Right, and the image that you create for yourself, and I think that in that there can be a lot of loneliness. There’s a psychologist named Woodstock us. And he is well known for bringing in ideas around humanism to psychology right believes that not in a god but in other human beings. And he wrote this really seminal textbook called loneliness. I mean, a textbook titled loneliness and he opens up With a really simple definition of loneliness, and that definition is, loneliness is a fundamental breach between who one is and who one pretends to be. Right. And at the World War level, I think there is a certainly an amount of fake it till you make it. And a certain amount of, you know, living up to that particular identity, even though you might have internal conflict about the lifestyle and about what you really want to be doing. You know, most of the time, I really want to just be taking a nap. So maybe I’m fundamentally breached all the time.
Allen Lim 04:35
taking a nap or riding your bike.
Allen Lim 04:36
Yeah, exactly. And having food so not right eating.
04:41
Writing. Yeah, that’s it. And for some reason that brought me to the World Tour, which
Allen Lim 04:47
there’s very little of any of those things I know. And, well, when you do the eating, it’s usually kind of shit food. Yeah, yeah, frequently, you got a really, really rich French food. Yeah, it’s like two opposite extremes. Lots of Carrots, man. Lots of carrots. Yeah. And steak that’s just been hammered to death. Yeah,
Allen Lim 05:06
yeah. But yeah, thanks for taking a look at that and bringing that point up. I think it’s pretty salient, you know, and it’s certainly a struggle that we all face when we’re trying to achieve and we’re fed a lot of different narratives about what that success is supposed to look like.
Allen Lim 05:20
I think that’s particularly applicable as well to athletes who have left the sport or thinking about leaving the sport because man, when you’re professional athlete, or even just a dedicated amateur athlete for many years, changing that identity and no longer being, you know, a bike racer, that’s a big step. I’ve gone through various phases of that myself. That’s right. See, some of my my colleagues and peers go through that it’s quite challenging.
05:43
Yeah. And I think it is a very human thing. And there are so many different levels of identity, whether it be religion, whether it be geography, whether it be family name, whether it be what you do for work, and every culture has maybe a different prioritization, you know, in the US, that’s definitely around the workplace and what you do for a living, you know, In Asian culture, it’s definitely around your family name and the reputation that that brings, you know, and a lot of, you know, in my travels, I saw a lot of that being distinguished by religion, you know, do you call yourself X, Y or Z? Right? And ultimately, it kind of comes down to trust whether or not someone sees you as valid, which is so weird, right? Because who’s to say,
Allen Lim 06:25
isn’t it and for me, this boils down to a concept of a universal concept, which is tribalistic thinking. Yeah, it’s Are you a bike racer? Are you a Broncos fan? That’s right, are you an American? That’s your color rotten, rotten pride. And to me, I really feel like this is an unpopular opinion. I’m in the minority in this respect, but I’ve never felt a strong allegiance to any tribe of any kind. Even as a cyclist to me honestly, when I’m in a cafe dress in normal clothing and five bike riders come in. They’re annoying as fuck To be honest, clacking around in their shoes. With their tight pants on and stuff and then and then we all cyclists do this just throw us all under the bus right now I take licensed to do this. I’ve called myself the world’s biggest bike dork on this podcast. So I just have to give that disclaimer, like when I bashed cycling, it’s out of love, but also brutal honesty. Because loving relationship is about support and challenge while cycling. Here’s your challenge. Like we do this thing where we talk really loud when we ride next to each other because you’re talking over the wind. And then when you get to the cafe, you’re talking the same volume. Have you noticed this? drives me nuts. And I
07:33
thought that was a an American thing?
Allen Lim 07:37
Probably. Probably there’s a multiplier there.
Allen Lim 07:39
Right? Yeah, because you do notice this amongst, like, especially if you’re in Europe, and you’re working with a team that has many different cultures on it, you start to notice these cultural nuances. And Americans. You know, I know it’s a stereotype. They’re generally louder painting in a broad brush. I mean, stereotypes exist for a reason. Yeah. So I see the love Colby, I see the Love is a stain. I see the attraction, right? It’s like a kind of weird type of cycling phobia thing, a phobia. How do you manage like, you know you? You love it, but you hate it. You’re scared of it. You’re scared. You’re scared of what you love?
Allen Lim 08:17
A little bit. I don’t know if I’m scared of it. But I’ve definitely hated at times. For sure. I mean, just like any long, long enduring relationship, there are moments where you just want to strangle that site, right. And there are other points where you just want to crawl in bed and snuggle with it
08:31
back to identity. That’s also kind of where I think that there’s there’s a lot of self loathing that happens, right? We beat ourselves up all the time.
Allen Lim 08:37
Don’t we were our own best critics. So yeah, I mean, that goes back to tribalistic thinking, right. Like, it doesn’t matter where where we apply this concept. It’s applied over and over again in human minds, where we draw artificial boundaries around things or people and we associate them as what I call Disney paradigm. Yeah, good or bad, right? Yeah. So there’s a bad characters and all disease movie and then they’re good character. And then there’s the one goofy character the whatever the sounds of the crowd or whatever who’s just goofy and does Yeah, odd thing so it makes everybody laugh tells fart jokes or whatever. So we have the good characters and the bad characters and when we grow up and we walk through the world I would argue with less consciousness or less critical thought we apply that same paradigm to many things in our lives like Oh, I got hit by car today that was bad. Yeah, but yeah, you know, did nine months of therapy really actually make you stronger and a lot of ways well then three years later, you might be a far stronger better educated better at you know, more equipped athlete better to deal with stress, because of that entire experience of getting hit by car. So it’s when you zoom out enough, you can see the boundaries between these tribes start to blur, and I don’t remember even what our original thought was as far as tribalistic thinking, but it’s such a universal concept, right identity.
09:58
I do. I do think this You know, if you go back to this idea of tribalism, and you go back to sports, and you talk about having a favorite sports team, and you were to ask somebody who their favorite sports team was, and they, you know, were able to give you an answer, if they were a fan, then you asked them a second question, at what age did you develop this affection? At? what age did you imprint on this team? And I guarantee you that almost everybody who has a favorite team imprinted on that team before they were 10 years old, my dad, like
Allen Lim 10:27
the Buccaneers, right? Or whatever.
10:29
And you don’t tend to change from that. Right? You have some sort of association at a very early age. And you hold on to that. And I think our brains are very weird. In that respect. We’re kind of maybe neurologically conditioned to this, which also to your point comes back to the Oxford sociologist Dunbar right, who talks about as this concept called Dunbar’s number, the concept is that our brain can only hold so many relationships, maybe about 100 in total, and that there’s a concentric level of interest. See, such that at the very, very core, the most intimate level, you can only maybe really be close to about four or five people, which is the family unit. Right. And from there, these concentric circles expand out. And it’s a bizarre concept in a world where we are so interconnected, right where you might have thousands of, you know, followers, and yet right, maybe you only really care about a handful of them.
Allen Lim 11:24
Yes, it’s Yeah. It’s that same concept of, well, perhaps the Dunbar concept is the same idea. Is this. The statement that you are kind of the product of the four or five people you spend the most time with? Yeah, right. Yeah, you you have such strong overlap and such play such importance on those relationships, that they really influence your way of thinking and looking at the world. Yeah. So and then you’re right, then those concepts or social circles expand out from there to the point probably where you see other people through that lens to a degree, right? That’s right. And those people change depending upon what stage in life you are at. That clouds, again, your identity and your self concept and who you think you are. And so, you know, when I was on a world tour, and those were the people I was spending all my time, yep, that narrative gets reinforced that this is the most important thing. And all of a sudden, it becomes harder and harder and harder to ask yourself if there’s something better or different, or that might be actually, you know, fundamentally better than what you’re doing right now. More enriching for you as a person or more inspiring. Yes. Right. To bring out your higher mission or That’s right. Yeah. Yep. Yep. I think, you know, to expand on that point for just one second. I think this is one of the ways in which I mean, if you look at Matt Kahn’s work, he talks about how kind of everything is perfect. It’s sort of Arnold patents, universal principles we are we all are exactly as we should be. And everything is perfect as it is. It’s very existential. I’ll tell you why. Because from an existential standpoint, everyone is doing the best they can realize they would be doing better. Exactly. Well, exactly right. So we’re all doing the best we can. We’re working with what we’ve got, so to speak, and we’re here to learn our lessons is kind of the way to think about it. Yeah. And to bring a personal example to that my parents died when I was very young, so I feel like I probably had less of that. At least parental imprinting Yeah, upon me, which led me probably to a perspective where I was freer to think perhaps a little more critically about the world and some other people. Yeah, it also led me to about a 20 year phase where I was on a DIY mission. I was listening to No Man’s advice about fucking anything, because I thought I was the shit. So there were a lot of people who perhaps offered me valid mentorship or good advice, and I was like, Who are you? I’m 15. And my parents been dead for years. I know everything.
13:45
Yeah. Wow.
Allen Lim 13:47
Right. So but dare I say it’s given me a little bit more freedom, perhaps in some people who were more ingrained or have more entrenched belief systems that were beaten into them by their parents. Yeah, I don’t mean physically. Perhaps In some cases, unfortunately, so how did that change when you became a parent, all children are tasked with the unfinished business of their parents. So what I see frequently My daughter is some of her struggles and manages brings me right back to her age or really, she’s a far superior human to me. So she’s going through all this about five years ahead of where I was, which is cool to see. Yeah. So but it’s still the same lessons. And sometimes I see you’re repeating that lesson, you know, because she hasn’t quite passed it yet. Which is part of parenthood. I mean, yeah. At times, it’s painful, but at other times, it’s like, you know, this is her path. And all I can do is when she comes to me and asked me, What do I do, I can give her the best possible advice. But if there’s one single lesson that I’ve taken away as a coach, or really as a human, it’s that unsolicited advice doesn’t matter if it’s a guy thing or gal thing what unsolicited advice rarely goes over. Well, it’s not there are not very many people in the world who Who will take a piece of unsolicited advice about how to improve their lives? And actually listen to it most the time we are defensive when someone offers us that. Yeah, yeah. That’s also just human nature, I think. Yeah, I
15:12
think that’s what as a coach, I have found that being Socratic tended to work a lot better than telling people what to do.
Allen Lim 15:19
Yes. Right, asking them questions, having a conversation performing, I could use one of my favorite words and a Linkous
15:27
Anna Lingus and a Linkous. What’s Anna Lincoln and a Linkous
Allen Lim 15:30
is using the Socratic method to demonstrate a point to someone but you do it by asking them questions. Like Why
15:36
are you such a D bag?
Allen Lim 15:41
Well, you have to reverse engineer it. You have to be like, Well, okay, let’s examine why you flipped off that driver when he honked at you after you ran a stop sign. Yeah, and then you you break it down piece by piece until they’re forced to look at the fact that oh, I guess I’m a D bag.
15:56
Yeah, we’ve all been there.
Allen Lim 15:59
Huh? I was there when I was 17. Now I stopped at stop signs. I mean, come on people. What the fuck? Alright. Wait, we didn’t make it to the intro yet. Alan, you coached me the Euro went to the Olympics. Yes. That was fucking cool.
16:17
That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, you were I wasn’t really familiar with track cycling. You were the guy who was kind of guiding it. And it was great just to be someone there that you could bounce questions and ideas with. Right. And that was I think that’s the best part of I think the coaching relationship. It’s when you write the play, you write the script, and I can come in and help edit, right?
Allen Lim 16:43
I don’t Yeah, and maybe not all athletes are capable of that. But there should be but from my perspective, what I remember is you I remember when we first started the whole team pursuit thing and you started working with me on the track a bit and then your head sort of exploded a little bit. You’re like, What the hell’s going on here and you made this massive spreadsheet with like, 20 two columns, and it broke down CDA and the difference between the speed and the straights and the corners. Yeah. And all the physics of what the hell was happening on each lap?
17:09
Yeah. To consider even like, what what’s the temperature difference between when the crowd comes in in the evenings? Yes versus what is it like, you know,
Allen Lim 17:16
morning session when there’s 12 people that are whatever. That’s right. All that influences time. That’s right. And lap speeds. And it was like,
17:23
and that seems like standard practice now.
Colby Pearce 17:25
But Dude, you were This was 2004. Yeah, way ahead of the curve. So high
17:30
five. Thank you. Yeah. Seemed like the logical thing to do.
Allen Lim 17:34
Right. You know, see what I mean. seemed like a good idea at the time. Only in this case. It actually was. Yeah, when you use that expression, it’s like, it seemed like a good idea at the time to launch that potato gun at that police car. That’s right.
17:45
That’s right. Exactly. Yeah. So it was really nice to kind of almost bring in,
17:51
you know, a kind of uncarved block perspective to world chat cycling to learn a ton about it. And I think as a scientist, it was Well control that you really didn’t know if, you know, you were on or off, right. And you were one of the very first athletes that I ever knew to really adopt power, you know, wholeheartedly. And so you already had a ton of experience coming into the 2004 games in terms of quantifying, you know, your world and being both data driven, but also, I think very driven in terms of how you felt you’re, you’re really really in tune a lot more in tune than a lot of other guys. So for being such a young, you know, dickhead you really pretty sensitive dude, thank you so much. contradiction, a balance. Fair enough.
Allen Lim 18:37
I yeah, I mean, I feel like for me developing an intuition as an athlete was so necessary and potent. And I would argue that, you know, really well, I’ve got a further question that’s further down the list for you about metrics and how they relate to athletics and that gets to this point, which is, what are we trying to accomplish when we measure measure metrics, you know whether those metrics are power or TSS, or heart rate during a particular workout heart response or even internal temperature with a thermometer, whatever, whatever. HRV is one of the, you know, more popular ones. I mean, Dr. Lim, in your opinion, what, what’s the point of all this? Why are we trying to measure these metrics?
19:18
I think the point is, is that we either want reassurance, or right, some confirmation that what we feel or what we think is right or on the right track. And maybe this is not to say that you were addicted, I think that you were ultra sensitive as a athlete and you spent so much time thinking about things that when people gave you advice, that it would almost kind of great because they didn’t necessarily know how much time you actually spent thinking about that topic. Right? And so you spent a ton of time for example, thinking about a situation that you’re in and then some, you know, person comes up and points it out to you and you’re just like, you know, like
19:58
no shit Sherlock right?
Allen Lim 20:00
Will you stop talking to me? Because I’ve already thought about this for five days? Yeah.
20:03
And we’re trying to kind of uncover something that might give us some, some some insight. I also think that, you know, we’re not very, very good at judging ourselves. And we are filled with so much bias. And that what the data does is it helps us to maybe uncover that. Sometimes I can set up new biases. And sometimes that can actually be really, really enlightening. But I do think that ultimately, it is the real positive side of human curiosity. Yeah, right. Yeah. And human curiosity can take, you know, the form of either faith or the form of science. It can take the form of, Hey, this is my best guess this is what I decide to believe in because it creates a construct and a structure by which I live the world. But there there’s also evidence based problem solving. Right? And if we can kind of come out of ourselves and use evidence to solve our problems, then that’s The best of human curiosity, I believe,
Allen Lim 21:02
right? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Great. So I’d love to unpack that that polarity you just brought up which is the sort of you can look at the world through the lens of science or you can look at the world through the lens of faith and and i think people as a general concept that’s absolutely valid and are realistic model of the way a lot of people think about the problem intellectually, which means they’re viewing that entire problem through the science mind even the face based mind. Yeah, but also here’s the problem I have with that is the limitations of the face faith based mind which I’ve recorded another podcast my Morpheus quote from the movie when he talks to commander lock and locks like Dennett Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe in his responses. my beliefs do not require you them to so that’s my Morpheus voice again, it’ll get better because you’re gonna hear that one again, probably. So what I’m getting at is that the science mind is hear a lot of people, I’ve studied some people recently who have said, okay, science is our God for a lot of people in 2020. And you read, I love reading online forum comments to a point on articles and things because inevitably, you’ll have one or two people who come and say, well show me the double blind study. Yeah, I don’t believe it unless, and they don’t care. It’s like they draw the line at anything that’s got a university supported, double blind, placebo controlled, you know, study with four white papers and a meta analysis that agrees with it or whatever, you know, insert your pile of data here, whatever that pile is, and anything past that they just refuse to acknowledge as possible truth which, first of all, let’s just spell it out there people this is complete bullshit, because there’s a lot of stuff that is true that science doesn’t know yet or hasn’t proven in a double blind study yet. That’s right. That’s right. But then there’s also stuff that will never be proved by science. That is also true. Like how do you love your mom?
23:00
Well, that’s where you get into the idea of falsifiability and science. Right? Right. And that falsifiability is at the very core of the scientific method. And it’s this idea that you can either prove something true or not true, right? So you can develop a hypothesis. But there are a lot of things in life that we can’t develop a hypothesis for, such as the existence of a God, or the presence of love. Correct, right. And so if something is not falsifiable, it doesn’t fall into the realm of science. And so there are already some things that just categorically can’t be scientifically discerned. Right, right. And that’s just freaking life. That’s the date polarity or the Nate contradiction that we all live with. And in fact, you know, one of my favorite quotes is by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he says the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind and still retain the ability to function. Oh, that’s a great quote. We still need to do something. Yes. Having an answer or no answer. Right, I would rather have a good answer and have a good direction. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you in lieu of an answer, just sit on your ass.
Allen Lim 24:10
Right? So that’s a great way. That’s a great perspective. Yeah.
24:15
Yeah. But you know, science and religion have always been intertwined. Max Planck, who is kind of known as the father of quantum physics has this great. Another great quote, and his quote is above the gates of the halls of science read the words he must have faith. Right? You are taking a best guess with a hypothesis you are imagining a possibility. The key is can you develop a test to prove this true or not true, and then the realm of quantum physics? Holy cow. Right, right. Like developing a test for some of this stuff is just way, way out there. Right.
Allen Lim 24:50
Yep. This is Schrodinger. Cat land, and
24:53
it’s right. Yeah, I just can’t even see what you’re trying to measure. Yes.
Allen Lim 24:56
But as shorteners cat demonstrates the presence of An observer can influence the experiment. That’s right. You know, which is just blows people’s minds all the time too. So that’s my concern is that the science mind doesn’t recognize these intangibles that are unquantifiable or unverifiable by science. My concern is that there are people who walk through the world and at least okay to sidestep briefly for one minute, this is how I imagine people’s minds work based on the comments I’ve seen. Yeah, we all do this, we imagine how other people’s minds work, which is part of our bias as we walk through the world.
25:27
That’s right. And
Allen Lim 25:28
science types. That’s right. I don’t know. The reality is I have no idea what’s going on in any individual person’s head. But based on what I’ve seen, this is the concern I have is that people are walking through the world going, I don’t believe in anything unless I see a paper behind. That’s right. When if that’s true, then please think critically about your reality.
25:47
While I think that even in science, there is kind of a there’s a similarity between science in a stereotype a stereotype is maybe your own view of an average right? On average, Americans talk louder. Right? Right, right. And the issue with science, especially biological science, is that you end up averaging very scattered data. Mm hmm. Right? Each individual, or each individual point in a scatter plot is a reality, right? And yet, they don’t always fit to a straight line. And yet, we run a correlation, or we run averages, and we do a line of best fit. And we say, this is what is normative. This is what is happening on average. And yet, that average discounts the fact that there may not be a single data point on that line of reaction,
Allen Lim 26:40
right. So this is it’s a, there’s got to be a survivalist component to this because we see one Tiger at each one of our friends, okay, any big striped animal from now on is probably bad. That’s right and deadly. Now the next time you see a herd of zebras, you might run like hell, but that’s not gonna hurt you. That’s right.
26:55
But and so you know, describing your own reality, I think that we are now in a golden age. Data Collection Yes, in the sense that you can determine what your norms are. Mm hmm. Right. And your norms might be different from somebody else and your norm was actually norm of excellence, right of elite achievement. Right? Why? Why couldn’t every other human being on this planet be at your standard? Right? And yet, you know, ultimately, you’re just living your own reality and you had a lot of data to determine what was normative for you what was a good day or a bad day? Ultimately, you know, when I think about training and exercise physiology, there’s this component that of me that looks at every single person like a bag of Jiffy Pop, and I see you know, cook popcorn or under cook, you got a lot of kernels, right. You got a lot of Colonel son, right, right. We’re just gonna pop off kernels,
Allen Lim 27:48
but we don’t want to leave it on the stove to launch right
27:50
it’ll get burned. Yeah, exactly. And we’re all maybe coming to the table with a different number of kernels are short flavor of kernels, a bigger bag, smaller bag.
27:56
That’s right. Exactly the analogy Right, exactly.
27:59
ganic nano. And once popped, there’s so much that our environment can do to change the taste or the structure of that popcorn. Right, right. But caramel all that what kind of oil to use? Yeah, you savory. Are you sweet? Right? Right? So the complexity of that really expands and that that ultimately begs to, you know, nurture, nature. And everything else that comes with it. Yep,
Allen Lim 28:20
yep. Yep, agreed. So, and that also the perfect example for that. Well, in coaching world, what you’re saying, I think, is that each athlete is an individual, they’re as unique as their fingerprint. So that’s why formulaic coaching, it can make a large number of athletes potentially progress to a certain point. Yeah, but different athletes have different responses to the same program, because of those different sized bags of kernels or different types of kernels. So we can give 50 people the same interval protocol for nine weeks and we’ll get totally different results based on what their baseline fitness was, what how responsive they are to that type of workload, how well they weren’t recovering off the bike, all those other variables that go into it right now. This also goes to retool, which I know, you know, Todd, and I’m friends with Todd and I’m not bagging on retail at all. But I got to point out like one of the big flaws of using reasonable system for bike fit, which quantifies, it quantifies joint angles in 3d. Basically, it gives you and then what what we do is we compare inevitably, as humans, we look at someone’s joining us, and we compare them to an orthodox pile of average data. That’s right. Now, that’s fine, that can tell us certain things about an athlete. But the problem comes when you start to compare the athlete to that pile of data and you see someone that’s an outlier there, oh, there at the 98th percentile for leg extension for knee extension, or the, whatever fourth percent offer ankle dorsiflexion. And then you start to make changes to their fit not based on what you’re seeing about that athlete as an individual, but their function, their flexibility, how supple their muscle is, how they make power, what the demands of their event are, you just start moving them towards the average of a pile of data and as you just said no one’s actually on the average line. That’s right. That’s why no one likes a beige house but people all builders, paint houses beige, because maybe there’s one person in the universe who like who actually wants to
30:12
be just pointing out a great irony here because I think that every athlete wants to be an outlier. And yet word by we advise them by bringing them back to the average
Allen Lim 30:24
so dang Yeah, just rant for just go for so far. Please do. I’m, I’m I’m guilty of this. I used to be until I heard so many other people doing it. And even world class athletes. I’m really fucking tired of this speech. I’m not that talented. My view is not that high. Don’t make that much power. But man, I’m just so driven and I work so hard. at like, how many times have you heard that card? I’m sorry, guys. It’s getting really tired. Like, you’re a cyclist. You’re already self selected to be the type of idiot who will bash themselves into oblivion for hours on end. That’s right. You’re not saying Special you’re not an individual snowflake in this respect. Yeah, we are all equally what what’s the word? I’m looking for? stupidly Alatorre I’ll just go out and pound petals for hours. Like if we weren’t that type of people, we would have been basketball players. Yeah, sure, you know, because in high school basketball players and football players got a lot more checks than I did as a skinny bike twerp. Yeah, I ended up on you know, wearing my little clicky clicky clack shoes and my stupid stretchy pants because that’s what I kind of was good at. And then I was like, mildly pissed off about all the stuff that happened to me in my life and all the jocks who beat me up or whatever. And I went out and smashed a bunch of mountain tops until I eventually ground myself into some kind of condition where I could sort of do okay as a bike race. Yeah, that’s a very common story in cycling, and I’m really not trying to minimize anyone’s work. I’m just saying, like, if you made it to an elite level in cycling, like please stop bashing your talent level to inflate your ego and martyr eyes yourself into how hard working you are. That’s right.
32:00
appraisers are what’s only it’s it’s only half the story and you’re only representing maybe half the story. And yes, I think the line that I always use to try to resolve that, in a contradiction is this line. And the line is fields are born winners are made, right that when you see a group of athletes lining up at the Olympic marathon, for sure, they’re all already different they were born to be in that you’d already self selected to throw you there
Allen Lim 32:25
on that start line.
32:26
That’s right. But the only way once you were self selected to be on that start line that you have a chance of winning or getting on the podium is if you take advantage of that and you make yourself and so there is kind of an equal parts truth here. Yes. to both you know, your to both accounts, but people over represent one half of that story.
Colby Pearce 32:47
Yeah, it’s so anyway, went over.
32:52
I appreciate that. You know, like, I people have told me that I’m smart. And you know, maybe sometimes I do discount that. But I also know that both my parents were college professors before I was even born. Right? So you have to really freaking smart people, right? Who decided to get funky. Yeah. Right.
Allen Lim 33:14
And the chances are high that it’s gonna
33:17
break. Right. And not only that, but like when I was younger, and you know, I had a math problem. Even though my dad didn’t speak great English, I could show him any math problem at any level from, you know, basic math all the way up to Calculus. And he could just sit down, look at it, and solve the problem. And as I watched him solve the problem, I could learn how to solve the problem, right? And I write, I took for granted universal language, something that was something that was actually very special, like, How did he know how to solve those problems? Right, and show me how to solve those problems. Yeah, it’s freaky, right? Yeah.
Allen Lim 33:55
Okay, last point in the intro.
33:58
Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. This is great. Okay, this is great.
Allen Lim 34:02
Dr. Lim, you’ve authored three books in, in partnership with BG Thomas. That’s right. The feed zone cookbook feeds on portables and feeds own table.
34:15
That’s right. You know, it’s it’s, it comes from the experience that I had and Pro Cycling that really showed me that you can’t reduce all of your sports nutrition, right. And you can’t reduce sport, right? When and, you know, one of the issues, I think, is that I had a very reductionist level of training, meaning that I was taught to try to break things into parts. And that goes down all the way to genetics and biochemistry, which are incredible sciences, right, that have transformed the world. But there’s another side of science besides reductionism, which is called emergence. And emergence is this idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and consciousness is a really interesting aspect of emergence. Right? You of all these neurons, you have all these neuro transmitters, you have gray matter, white matter, you have these different sectors of the brain. And as much as we know about these parts, none of them explain why we are self aware we have consciousness. Right, right. And I think the same is really true with nutrition and with athletic performance. And there were so many recipes that we were bringing to the table that we were using to feed our athletes. When I was on a world tour, it made sense to try to bring that to a very kind of pragmatic, you know, endpoint with the cookbooks. Right? Instead of talking about nutrition. Let me just show you a bunch of recipes that we know are delicious, beautiful, that bring people to the table together. And yeah, we’ll quantify the nutritional content of this food. Right? We’ll also show you a great picture. hopefully get you to salivate, right? inspired to actually start your sports nutrition and, you know, kind of adventure in the kitchen, where it’s supposed to Begin not by opening up a package.
Allen Lim 36:02
Right? Right. Yeah, I preach that to my athletes over and over again. Um, you know, if you can’t pick it, peel it, skin it or catch it. Yeah, shouldn’t eat it. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can catch a Twinkie. But I’m talking about catching a fish. If you can’t identify it in a forest or on a farm. Ideally, it doesn’t go in your mouth. Yeah, that’s some. That’s a concept that unfortunately, a lot of people have to get their heads wrapped around because it’s alien to them.
36:32
Well, I think it’s more alien to Americans as a whole, because we have a very techno centric culture. We have a tech culture that is built around innovation, which is really, really amazing. And that’s ultimately driven by science. And that’s ultimately, you know, reinforced by technology. When you look at other cultures, though, there might be a more traditional what’s called ethnocentric culture, your culture that is passed down and you see this different In the way people eat, you can have an ethnocentric style of eating or you can have a techno centric style of eating. I think that there is probably some balance between the two.
Allen Lim 37:10
Right? Like, you took me to dim someone time. Right? That’s right example of that’s right of style of food and eating the right house down for I don’t know how many thousands of years. That’s right. And you know,
Allen Lim 37:22
you know, my
37:24
my bias is to always use white rights. And when people say, hey, look, what’s the benefit of you always using white rice? I the only real thing I can say is that well, this is the way my mom taught me how to make rice. Right? This was the cultural norm in my family growing up. And so now I have imprint or natural bias towards this as being more delicious or tastier or more comforting to me.
Allen Lim 37:49
So my daughter spent her fall in Japan and she actually read somewhere recently, I don’t know where that someone figured out not too long ago that the biome of a People extracts more protein from rice than Americans. So it’s white rice. There you go by half. I mean, I may not get as much out of it as you would.
38:10
That’s right. Right. So maybe maybe not.
Allen Lim 38:12
Yeah, I am is something that’s there’s another little universe of science that we’re but
38:16
here’s the thing is do I now have an American bio
Allen Lim 38:19
because you’ve lived in the US for?
38:22
I’ve been in Boulder, Colorado since 1994. There you go, holy cow. What if I’ve Chinese, but I’ve got a white bio.
Allen Lim 38:28
I don’t know. I don’t know. But you’ve lived in Boulder a long time. You’ve also Dan, you probably also have some pretty good diversity you spent how many years traveling with World Tour teams.
38:37
Yeah, almost a decade or so. And then on and off throughout my time at scratch, you know, so, I’ve been fortunate enough to, you know, have this business now that still allows me the opportunity, when I’m really inspired or you know, especially by it’s it’s all about the person right? To get out there and get back in the field, especially now more on my own terms, then on a You know, this is what you have to do. And I think that, you know, we’ve we’ve all had an unconditional relationship with sport. And maybe the problem with becoming a quote unquote professional is that it does become conditional.
Allen Lim 39:13
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It’s so
39:18
yeah. Anyways, Now, back to my bio,
39:21
right? Yeah.
39:24
Is there a way that you know, another man can look into another man’s bio? Colby?
Allen Lim 39:28
Well, you know, there are fecal transplants. I mean, there’s no way you can get someone else’s by home. I just want I
39:33
just want I just want someone to tell me it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.
Allen Lim 39:36
Yes. I mean, there’s lots of biome testing on that subject. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts. I’ve done a little bit of reading about this. And it seems like it’s an emerging technology where people are studying biomes and analyzing them and then every few months, there’s a new company that comes out with the next best method and I think there’s layers and layers to this and people are realizing how many what the incredible variety Have critters is that lives in our structure. I mean, we’re more bacteria than we are human Actually, that’s right when you go unit per unit. So pretty, pretty interesting. That’s right. And that this is again, the balance between advancing technology, advancing science and also at times creating, you know, maybe erroneous trends or confusion because we don’t yet have the whole picture. Right. Right is all literally tip of the iceberg. It is exactly that. And that’s and same thing with telomere testing, right? Yeah. And even DNA testing has gone through a few rounds already. And they’re getting more advanced with it. But I’ve heard several people have said in equivalent, they’ll take DNA from the same human and send it to three or four different companies. And they’ll also send multiple samples to the same company under different names and they’ll get different results. That’s right, like Oh, wait, I hear what’s going on how many thousands of dollars of that
40:50
wash. There’s there’s always error and process and i think that you know, any any measurement requires a process and every step in the process Process introduces another possibility for variability.
Allen Lim 41:04
But so we have this weird paradox, right where we have access to all this information on the interweb. And we can go look at Wikipedia, and we can study websites and experts and have access to all this knowledge. But at the same time, at the tip of that leading scientific edge, at least ostensibly, from a consumer standpoint, anyone can start a company, a biome company, or some other company that measures some other metric of the human body. And they can say, we give you all this information on the length of your telomeres. But the reality is the technology they’re using is so far removed from what the customer could possibly understand about the process. Yeah, the customer really is at the mercy of that company in terms of what information they have. That’s a tricky paradigm. Right. So
41:44
I don’t even know how a Xerox machine still works. Like, right. You know, I mean, it’s been a long time since I’ve gone to kinkos and made a photocopy but still like, Why don’t they
Colby Pearce 41:54
work? How does it go? Yeah, exactly. How many little critters are in there. ASAP.
42:00
I don’t know.
42:03
Yet I trust when I see the end product that, you know, there’s a perfect copy. And I think that that’s ultimately, the only thing we can trust is what is the end product? And is there some sort of pragmatic or practical outcome that makes me feel like I’m actually have improving my life? Right? Either going faster or sleeping better? Yes. You know, being able to relate with others in a more meaningful way. But
Allen Lim 42:30
yeah, it’s challenging, though, whether you’re talking about quantifying HRV, or even comparing the accuracy of power meters. That’s right. And everybody’s doing their own guide for power meters on my bike at once. That’s right. And
42:41
there’s always confirmation bias, because if you get the right outcome, yep. Right. Even if you might have used the wrong process. Yes, it confirms that that process was the right did send
Allen Lim 42:52
the right money on this pair of potholes or That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. l What’s your favorite color.
43:01
You know,
Allen Lim 43:03
my favorite colors are the colors of nature. Oh
Allen Lim 43:08
yes, the green grass. The purple mountains majesty.
43:13
Yeah, I really attracted to that. But I will say this in terms of favorite color. I was riding on the dirt roads outside of Boulder here. And I saw this farmhouse that was painted blue on its base and white on the top. And this blue contrasting with the green and all the other natural colors of the world. I was like, holy cow. I think my favorite color is that blue because it does step in in stark contrast to the natural world. I also like blue because there are so many idioms associated with blue for example. You know, you might feel blue right now, but don’t worry, Colby blue skies are ahead. You might want to make a blueprint so that things don’t come out of the blue, right? Right. So many idioms, so many Freaking contradictory videos with the word blue. Right? Blue Eyed boy. Uh huh. Right Brown Eyed girl. The men
Colby Pearce 44:10
in blue the minute the minute black. Wait,
44:13
Yeah, true blue. So blue final answer bled. Good
Allen Lim 44:19
answer. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. What is your dream goal or objective? Oh, to shift gears a bit. I don’t know which question is more important to air quotes?
44:31
Yeah, um, I do think goals are important. I do think dreams are important. I do find myself constantly living in a world of fantasy. I probably spend half of my life projecting fantasies that are actually real. And I find it delightful. I find it so much fun. I find it entertaining. I find it to be this incredible ball, where a lot of people might watch television or Daydream or or Meditate I daydream, right? I just like Walter Mitty, like to fantasize. Um, you know, when I daydream about all sorts of different things The other day I was daydreaming about the perfect backdrop, right? Just like, what was your perfect bathtub look like? I don’t know. It’s somewhere between kind of a clod type of big ass tub or a soaking tub. And yet, I want to be able to take a shower in it. So do I have to have a separate shower and then the tub right have to coexist with one another, and then you go down these crazy tangents. But you know, I will ultimately answer your question, Colby, and I’ll answer your question in this way. And this was a question that was asked to me a long time ago, when someone asked me maybe off of a coffee mug, what would you do if you knew you could not fail? My answer was fall in love. Because I think that it’s the one thing that I don’t want to fuck up. Right? And one thing as human beings we all want and there are so many different versions of love. And I think it’s love that brings us a sport. It’s love that brings us to every relationship that we’re in. It’s love that it’s ultimately so unquantifiable. And it’s, you know, now that I’m saying the word love a lot, it’s out the southie Shay. But it is kind of ultimately the one thing that makes being human so special and so unique. And I think that we do end up you know, trying to create these false identities and see a certain level of success in the world because we want that adoration we want that love we want that respect.
46:37
Hmm,
Allen Lim 46:39
well, adoration love and respect in that in that context is conditional, right. But yeah, I also so this is one of the curiosities about the English language. We have one word for love, but that that word in the English language means so many different things. I mean, I can say I love to ride my bike. I love my wife. Yeah, I love my cat. All different ways. I love my sister. All different meanings, right? I love when I take that first sip of coffee in the morning. All different different connotations to that word. Right? experiential, romantic. Yeah. Family, right? I love my best friend, etc, etc. So you can think of all these examples in many other languages there are different actual words for those uses. So, love and English is kind of a an overused or under expanded word perhaps.
47:27
Yeah, but it motivates us to so many weird things, right? Like, you know, like, Oh, I I need to have money because I love my kid and I want to provide you know, hockey lessons. Exactly. And no, ah, just yeah, it’s vexing and it’s complex, but I think it’s the root of a lot of our insanity and sanity. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah,
Allen Lim 47:52
yeah. loving relationship is about support and Josh
47:56
so yeah, love and have a fucking wicked top.
Colby Pearce 48:02
life goals man, those are those Yeah,
48:04
that’s that’s how that’s how it shakes down right? All right, like it shakes down right now your answer, you know i i did fantasize before this pandemic happen of having a pause button that I could stop because I felt like I was maybe on a treadmill I couldn’t get off of I wanted to be able to freeze.
48:22
Right and you’ve made this happen
48:24
today so like, be careful what you wish for
Allen Lim 48:27
right? I just said that yesterday. I you know, we may have manifested this together because I felt for about a decade I felt like man I would like to not be working at 9pm Yeah, you know, sprinting to bed to get the to get my inbox down to a manageable level. Yeah, I just I’m always going and some of that I think is my my personality, my in Chinese medicine and be a wood type, right, like always accomplishing going doing more and more, kind of very task driven, very, very active. oriented and now that’s my call hardwood or morning wood or a 47 I mean I guess the morning wood now is average would probably more maple.
Allen Lim 49:12
Yeah, nice so nice but
Allen Lim 49:18
it off with the woods a little bit a little bit now think about Russians. So I what I was getting at is that I feel like I maybe helped you manifest this slow down because also it wasn’t just my experiences and confirmation bias but I see I did hear a lot of people also saying man I’m so busy all the time and you felt the fernet I mean, you’ve been here since 94. Yeah, I’m here since 1972. Yeah. And this place is blowing up the Front Range is crazy. I no longer alpine ski, because you can’t go on a Friday or a Sunday without annihilating getting literally stuck on I 70 in a traffic jam in the forest. That’s right in the forest. There’s No stoplight for like 50
50:01
miles
Allen Lim 50:02
on a highway and you’re just sitting there looking at the deers. Like, what is wrong with you?
50:06
Oh, we’ve gotten in each other’s way.
Allen Lim 50:08
Right? And I don’t that’s not an enjoyable activity to me in any form like there’s no unless I could ninja way around that. There’s no so there’s things I do not do now. And what is very unfortunate realization for me is that I promised myself I would never live in California or specifically LA, because I did not want my life choices to be dictated by patterns of traffic, which is what happens when you live there. That’s right. And now I realized that to a degree, this has happened here, some life patterns, it’s happening everywhere. And then the discussion becomes I’ve been having this discussion with a lot of people recently. Do we move? Okay, well, where are we going to move to there are two problems with moving three that I can think of? One is it’s a year of your life. Yeah, pack up your house, sell your house, put on the market and buy another house or you can do a continued contract. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And then and then move to the other place and then spend at least six months getting all your ship unpacked. Now where that put that stupid inherited piece of furniture that you’re not sure you can get rid of without, you know offending your dead grandmother. Or buy a new one. That’s right, right. And how much IKEA do you actually want to own? Yeah, my universe? None but Okay, you got some here and there. So there’s all that that’s a year flushed. But then what did you do? Let’s say we move from Boulder to Bozeman. Bozeman is where boulder was about 22 years ago except with better food. So the clock ticks. But what do we do? Yeah. And then in five years, because it’s not happening at the same rate, it’s happening exponentially. In five years, Bozeman will be almost where boulder is now. But not only that, so Okay, I’ve replaced one set of problems for the same set of problems, but I delayed them. But I cost myself a year and a shit ton of money in the process. That’s right, because real estate is one to one. It’s right from Boulder to Bozeman, Montana move to Mexico, which I’m not. So then I added to the problem, because now I am the person who moved to Bozeman to increase to their workload. That’s right. And now I get to not only add to the problem and experience the same problem again. So what did I do? Yeah, here’s my other issue with it. It’s really easy to be this Zen meditative person who walks through the world and brings peace to others when you retreat to a cave, or you live in a mountaintop, you want to do some real work. Live in fucking New York City. Yeah, see what I’m saying? Yeah, that’s where the people need you if you’re going to be to make an ostentatious statement for a moment, if you’re going to be a lightworker and hopefully lift other people’s energies or bring something positive to them when you interact with them. You know, you’re not going to interact with any people if you live in Ward, Colorado.
52:33
That’s right. I think also, you know, maybe the issue and I thought about this issue a lot that you know, first there’s the whole grass is greener thing. And that’s probably a fallacy, right? You end up you know, moving and fucking someone else’s grass up.
Allen Lim 52:47
And then the dog barks there anyway.
52:48
Yeah. And then there is this, this idea around people versus place, right. And I’ve been here since 94. And I didn’t think that I was going to be here. You know?
Colby Pearce 53:01
However, it is now exploding head.
53:03
Yeah, exactly. But what has happened now every year that I stay in Boulder, I accumulate what I call another friendship here. Right? So it’s how many friends do I have? And how many years have I have I known them. And there’s no other place geographically in the world where I have as many friends for as many years. You multiply that out, and I would be insane to leave Boulder, right? It just, I can’t start over.
Allen Lim 53:32
That’s what that tells me is that you have great relationships with these people because you hear stories about people and I’m not bashing anybody who does this. But they’re like I needed a change. Yeah, flash and they go Yeah, and start again in a new community. And that can be a chance to redefine yourself which goes back to our earlier conversation about when you’re done being a professional athlete or you’re done working at the World Tour level. I mean, that would have been the time for you to move if you wanted to move. Yes, you could have gone to I don’t Anywhere Cape Town and been like now I’m Dr. Alan Lim, but I’m starting a new company. That’s right. And that’s right.
54:06
That’s right. And you know, maybe that makes it easier to change your identity. To be, I would argue with someone else, but I think that you just have to kind of own up to maybe evolving and being different and letting the people who are in your life know who that new person is. Yeah. And that’s what maybe keeps it interesting and stimulating is that we are changing. We are, you know, gaining new perspective, we can change our minds and we can have, you know, new and evolving opinions,
Allen Lim 54:30
agreed, right, exposure to familiar places, and people and things will bring us back to our default mode network. That’s right, right. That’s right. It’ll just reinforce that pattern that entrenched. I mean, that’s what drew my whole life aside from the all the traveling I did his bike rider, which was extensive, but still, that’s right older Tom, it’s familiar. And when I ride down ninth it always looks like ninth.
54:50
Yeah, right. And it is a pretty unique little little bubble as it is so I think we can make where we are better. And maybe if everyone did that there wouldn’t be that envy or that desire to think that we can just flush our existing problems down the drain and, you know, see where the sewer brings us.
Allen Lim 55:11
I think that’s a bit of medicine that’s come out of this experience for context. I don’t know when people are gonna listen to this, but this is may 21 ish or something like that. 2020 You know, so we’re theoretically coming out of some sort of dark tunnel, but we’ll see her then other people are waiting for some other wave. But I mean, from my perspective, man, riding I can write highway 36 again. That’s right. That’s right. There’s all the drivers for the first seven or eight weeks now it’s starting to get a little bit more crowded and a little more normal, a little more business, but I could ride anywhere at the driver. I don’t know when driving was so polite. Every cyclist is waving to each other. That’s right. Everybody’s wearing masks. All the people on trails are waving and saying hi and and people are just grateful to be out. I’m seeing kids and families walking in Doing hikes together. I mean, this is beautiful. Now contrast that with people are on full lockdown and can’t leave and are probably all vitamin D deficient and nature deficient. And I did an interview that’s released with Nathan Haas when we when I interviewed him he was on day 37 a full quarantine. Whoa. And the first two weeks that were in a hotel at the UAE tour was held back I mean, and it ended up being a total accumulation of nearly I think nearly 70 days was done, which is insane. That makes me feel really claustrophobic,
Allen Lim 56:32
right? I mean, we have so for me, this has been powerful medicine to walk through the world with so much gratitude because every time I get to go for a bike ride, I’m like, holy shit, I get to ride my bike today. This is like, worldwide. This is a thing that where a lot of people can’t do this, or they’re even some people who were it’s sort of gray zone. Yeah, like California. Yeah. And but some and so people are conflicted about it because they don’t want to be out in there too many other people out so they’re kind of Having it. Yeah. So there’s this constant state of like, should I be riding my bike? Am I gonna be yelled at? Am I gonna get someone sick? Am I gonna come home with something?
57:07
I’ve done more bike riding in terms of hours, kilojoules and miles in the last month that I have ever done. Since maybe 2002. Awesome. So in almost 20 years, yes, this is the most exercise I’ve ever, like, gotten lean and ripped owl. Yeah, I’m not even that, that that lean right now. But I have probably eating more as well. And I write sitting at my desk more. So there is kind of maybe a balance that’s happening here. Yeah, it’s very Yeah. Weird. Yeah. But still, I I like the fact that I can go a little harder for a little longer than I’ve ever been able to experience in a long time. That’s great. Yeah,
Allen Lim 57:55
that’s great. Can we rewind on food for a minute? Sure. Since you just mentioned food, so Okay, hearing different perspectives. This is a problem. I think that’s endemic in endurance sports is people view food as fuel. Yeah. And especially the World Tour level. Man, there’s at that level, it’s really hard to get around that mindset. Yeah. One thing that drives me bonkers, though, is when people are overly formulaic, or even really, I’ll say formulaic about food, like you need this many kilocalories of carbohydrate per hour in these conditions. To me that formula break there are 100 holes, I can shoot that immediately. That’s right. Right temperature humidity biome to 73 of the biggest ones alone. That’s right. So it’s like so to me, I just hate that stuff. It’s really a pet peeve of mine. I mean, for me, like and same thing with consumption of liquid per hour. Yeah, because my analogy is, it’s like landing a small airplane. Right? Just enough speed. Not too much altitude, not too little. Are you gonna crash too? Beat and now you know too much speed and altitude, you’re never gonna land. Yeah. So it’s like, how do we strike the perfect balance? And what that comes down to? Is the athlete feeling the body and being in touch with their intuition and how many calories they need. That’s right. That’s from a feeling perspective alone. But that whole side of the discussion ignores the entire aspect that there’s much more to food than fuel, as food has cheese in it. Yeah, that’s right. Food has energy has living life force in it. That’s why when you eat a packaged food, it has far less. What’s another word for cheese? I mean, some people may not like that word, or they may not understand it. So I’m looking for more said, Yeah,
59:39
well, I think I think the way that I tend to think of it is I think of food as either chemical fuel or I think of it as social fuel. Right? Because there is such a cultural importance to eating. And I think that whenever I see athletes get really techno centric and really into food as fuel paradigm. Yep. And they get really into the nitty gritty of quantifying it, macros quantifying macros. Yeah, what I see is that they tend to start eating in isolation. Right? And that the two are very,
Allen Lim 1:00:12
because they, they don’t want to get sucked into making the wrong choice if someone passes them too much olive oil.
1:00:17
Well, to your point about tribalism, they just don’t fit in anymore.
Allen Lim 1:00:20
Right. Okay, I can’t eat that.
1:00:22
Yeah. Because unless everybody at the table is weighing their food with their individual scale,
Allen Lim 1:00:27
right, which, for those of you who don’t know, that actually happens at the World Tour. Yeah, with reasonable frequencies,
1:00:32
right. So, unless you can create a whole entire tribe around that, then you are all of a sudden, isolated, and you’re weirdo, and that isolation and that kind of, you know, lack of common salary, the act of eating together, right. It is more ruinous to people’s psyche than you know whether or not they’re perfecting their nutrition. Can’t say from a, you know, physiological standpoint that the human body is extraordinarily adaptable, we can adapt to almost any fuel. You know, we can survive in almost any condition. We’re extraordinarily flexible animals. Yes. And so to say that there is a right diet is fairly difficult. But one thing is for certain we go crazy when we’re isolated, right? We go crazy when we are alone, because we’re biologically driven to be social creatures. And food is a massive component of that. And, you know, you go to the world tour, and you look at these kind of big dining halls, you know, and hotel rooms where they’re setting up kind of a bass feed for athletes, or, you know, at big restaurants that are catering for these guys. And you always know who is is going well. You always know who’s going to go well the next day, not by what’s on their plate by Which table is laughing the most? Right, right? Yeah. Which which table is filled with the most?
Colby Pearce 1:02:04
Yeah. Right. most joyous.
1:02:07
Yeah. The tables that are sitting there in silence. Mm hmm. Oh, you can just you can cut the tension with a butter knife. Right. Right. Right. It’s awful. Yeah. And so social fuel versus chemical fuel. I think we have a lot of flexibility with respect to our chemical fuel. We’re probably more constrained with respect to our social fuel.
Allen Lim 1:02:24
Yeah. Interesting. That’s a great, great way to break it down. Yeah.
1:02:30
So sit at the table. Shut up. He what’s on your plate? Tell us a good story.
Allen Lim 1:02:37
Right, and remember, you’ve got one mouth and two ears. That’s right. So you should listen twice as much as you say. Yeah, good. Check in with our list here. How are we doing?
1:02:50
Pretty good. We got two dreams. Meditation. Yeah. Oh, science is bullshit,
Allen Lim 1:02:56
right? I’d love to Yeah, I saw okay. Let’s pray that one. Yeah, I think it was around 2005, you gave a talk to I don’t remember if it was actually to the tiaa cref. team? Or if it was to the cu team, possibly, yeah, no, I remember the classroom, but I don’t remember where it was. But anyway, that was sort of your theme of your lecture was sciences bullshit. And we’ve touched a bit on this already. But sure free to expand I
1:03:22
think, at that time when I was really trying to express was this idea of individuality, right. And this idea that, like too much in biology, we regress everything to the mean, and that you have to really respect your own data. If you were to carve your own path as a successful outlier. Yes. Right. So maybe it wasn’t so much about bashing on science as it was about inspiring people to be and accept who they are to be good with their uniqueness. And to understand that their data point in the world was as meaningful as important as the average of all that data. Right, right. When we talked about this earlier, right, that is The confinement of science and really the confinement of Sport Science is that the population numbers are so small, you’re dealing with studies with 10 or 15. People, typically college age typically men, you know, typically not well controlled, typically done by graduate students who are just trying to get a degree and get the hell out. Right. So you have to kind of look at that and say, what’s more important, the actual result or the methodology, and I think the methodology is probably more important, how you answer the question how you collect the data, that’s probably more interesting than the actual results, because you can take that methodology and you can experiment on yourself and discover whether or not you know, you fall on one side of the line or on the other side of the line. Right. Right. That’s still evidence based problem solving.
Allen Lim 1:04:49
So I want to mention too, I was going to mention Dr. Stacey Sims if you’re cool. Yeah. Because she, I agree, like one of the big criticisms of university studies is that they are so frequently done on men. Yeah. And the amount of science that’s been done on women in the world of exercise is appallingly low. That’s right, right. That’s right. I’m disastrously low. And so when someone like Dr. Stacey Sims, pioneers, of course, where she talks about how to coach women differently, how to fuel women differently. Yeah, how women have different needs in as athletes. It’s groundbreaking work. It’s almost sadly groundbreaking, because it’s like, how long have we had women athletes? That’s right. That’s right. But here we are just figuring some of this stuff out. So
1:05:35
that being said, I do think that we are all human beings. And while there are really, really important gender differences that we need to respect, I, you know, kind of harken back, especially around food and diet that we can all still sit at the same dinner table together. And that, you know, this doesn’t have to necessarily create segregation.
Allen Lim 1:05:57
It doesn’t have to be divisive.
1:05:58
No, it does create it. Doesn’t have to be divisive. Yes. And that the very interesting thing about gender differences as a whole is that the individual variability within a gender is often greater than the average difference between genders. Right, right. And so you softer respect kind of the individuality of who you are. Because certainly, almost every female cyclist that I know, is stronger than I am.
Allen Lim 1:06:27
Women are amazingly strong, especially in endurance athletics, it just blows my mind. Yeah, right. Yeah. And
1:06:33
yeah, one of the things that I’ve really kind of love doing is after I left the pro tour, I started running these training camps out of Boulder, Colorado, and they were never gender exclusive. Right. And you have women and men training together on the bike on some of the hardest days that I’ve ever seen. And oh, yeah, you know, there was, you know, you’d have Neverland Stevens who were just right now or a DD Yeah, or DD destructor puddles truck Yeah, yeah with with the guys.
Allen Lim 1:07:02
Yeah I’ve done six hour rides with Didi and she smashes it.
Allen Lim 1:07:05
Yeah, yeah. credible. Yeah.
Allen Lim 1:07:08
Another resource I want to mention is at the Czech Institute, there’s a course that was recently released. It’s called holistic health and performance for women. And the author is Sarah Gustafson. And she did a podcast with Paul check about this. And it was pretty illuminating. But her courses, I think, on par with some of Stacy’s work. Yeah, in terms of exploring women and their relationship to exercise and how things need to change a bit. Yeah. So if you’re coaching, you’re coaching a woman, either or both of these resources are really valuable to, to study.
1:07:39
Yeah. And I think that, you know, ultimately, this is just a reflection of our own society and reflection of privilege and status and you know, that we have a very long history of studying primarily white males, right.
Allen Lim 1:07:53
It’s sad, but true. Yeah. Same old story.
1:07:56
Yeah. You know, what’s the line? It’s a He you didn’t make good choices. You have two choices.
Colby Pearce 1:08:06
Yeah, yeah. Although sometimes you will have good choices still make very poor choice.
1:08:12
That’s the rub, right.
Allen Lim 1:08:15
So
Allen Lim 1:08:17
we’ve covered a lot of this stuff, but moving forward. Okay. Now, tell us a little bit more about your coaching philosophies. We’ve unpacked the Socratic method a bit. Yeah. including the use of the Linkous
1:08:31
Yes, I think my general coaching philosophy is coach thyself, maybe if I were to kind of summarize what it is. I do see you know, coaching as being very, very difficult because you don’t live inside of somebody. And so, the more I move on in this sort of biz the less than less I get comfortable telling people what they are supposed to Doing, I can give them or share with them experience. But you know, that may or may not actually be specific to that person. I think that the thing that I’ve learned as a coach, the best that I can do is create environment, create a place where an athlete can be nurtured and they can actually thrive. There’s, you know, this, this idea of the, you know, daily performance environment, right? What does your life What does your environment need to be set up? So that how does it need to be set up so that you can do your best every single day. And that’s one thing that I know I can do for athletes, I can create a positive environment for them right you can and that that often requires a lot of a lot of grocery shopping, right and a lot of basic care and a lot of good cooking and a lot of just time spent together and a lot of conversation and so much happens from That what I see happening out of that is this ability to really improvise. And be in a space where you can decide in real time, what needs to get done, right maybe to encourage a place where people can actually work harder than they would have without that environment. Right. That’s also where inviting the right people into that Environment Matters. Having, you know, good quote unquote teammates or training partners really matters. So yeah, yeah, I think that I’m less I become less of an advice, advice giver, and more of an environment creator, environment builder, for, ya know, because you set up the right circumstances for people, and they will automatically thrive, especially if they are driven, you know, and that’s part of reason why boulders in the training place because Lee Hill is Lee Hill. Its steepest flock in some places, right? And there’s only one way to get over those steep sections. Right, which is to go deep, you know, right to go hard. And the environment ends up, you know, creating, creating that and even in a race situation, it is the race course, as much as it is tactics that determines how those races play out.
Allen Lim 1:11:15
Absolutely. Yeah. Which is why I struggle a little bit with all the course modeling that some people seem to be really into. I mean, I can see its applicability in contrast to a degree but you’re trying to model a lot of road race. Yeah, stuff. It’s just so complicated. I don’t know. I mean, maybe I’m just looking deep enough in the data, you don’t know what you don’t know. But to me, that was just an exercise in futility. It’s more like a and in that respect, the parallel would be that I’m more like about coaching the athlete to be resilient enough to understand what to expect. But then every race is like a whiteboard. I mean, you the best laid plans, right? Like, that’s when you have the team meeting on the bus, you tell the riders, this is what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna have a crosswind from these kilometers to these kilometers and she’s gonna hit the fan and this team is going to go to the front here and these guys are going to attack is the head too, and then you go to the race and everything goes exactly the the wind flips 180 degrees and now it’s hailing and yeah, half the team crashes and then you know, this team doesn’t do what you are guaranteed to have to do because it’s their only tactical card to play and they decide to do something else. And then it’s what Mike Tyson said,
1:12:17
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right?
1:12:21
Right. Yeah.
1:12:23
Holy shit. I just got punched in
Allen Lim 1:12:25
the face. Now what? Everything just went out the window. Yeah, cyclic Cycling is at least 50% made up on the fly.
1:12:31
So so I don’t I think with that in mind, one of my coaching philosophies is to teach a lot of skill set teach a lot of Yes, sir. Because it’s my belief, for example, that the most the best classically trained actors are the ones who are the best at improvisation. Right? Right, because they have this deep tool bag that they can draw from
Allen Lim 1:12:52
an innate understanding of the environment when went to apply the right tool. That’s right. That’s right. That’s, I mean, we’re we’re in agreement. I think on this You’re saying that the best way to coach someone is to make the best environment to allow them to foster and grow into the best self to express their highest potential as an athlete. And tactically during a race, it’s really the same thing. You’re creating environment by giving them the tools necessary to handle anything that happens on the road. Right? Yeah, that’s your and for me. That’s part of what I was driving at earlier with the the discussion about metrics and what they teach us. Yeah, I think ultimately, part of your answer was, it tells the athletes something about themselves to me, power, heart rate. Any other metric you want to put in that pile doesn’t really matter what it is on the bike off the bike, anything that measures anything is really there to do one thing only, which is to teach the athlete more about themselves and to develop and fine point their intuition. That’s right. That’s right. When they get out of bed every morning, every elite athlete does exactly the same thing. The second their legs hit the ground, they stand up, they make an instantaneous calculation. How recovered Am I yeah, am I swaddled to death? That’s right, or am I at 100%? And because that determines how their workout will go for that day. That’s your universe. That’s right. So these metrics like HRV, and recovery scores we get from sleep monitors, and power on a ride and heart rate or response to our workload. All those are just helping refine that intuition. But that’s not the end goal. This is one of my problems with modern metrics. People think power is a goal. Power is not a goal. Your powers not an end. It’s a tool. It’s a screwdriver. That’s right. It’s something you use to figure out what’s going on. And
1:14:25
sorry, I mean, it’s a measurement,
Allen Lim 1:14:26
right? It’s a measurement. It can measure stuff, but I don’t like my writer can win the race. And if they don’t send any power prs or their FTP is low spot, I don’t care. That’s right. The point of being a bike racer is to win races. That’s right. And there are lots of ways to win races without having a high FTP and to go all anti Coggan for a moment. Love you, Andy. But your his universe is dominated by that robot paradigm and FTP, which he says over and over again, like a broken record is the underpinnings of all aerobic endurance sports, and the greatest predictor of outcome. I think it completely Depends on the bike race you’re talking about. And I think the bias we have, as in the world of cycling on the whole is either right now it’s either the Tour de France or maybe Perrier Bay. Yeah, right. Yeah. And or possibly dirty. Kansa. Yeah, but there are so many other bike races. Yeah, that happened in our one in different ways. That’s right, and are not contingent only on watts per kilogram, which is a 50,000 foot view metric of rider performance. But on watts produced per gram of drag, aerodynamic drag, for example. Yeah, or timing of a sprint or ability to accelerate through a corner Yeah. Or ride a bike smoothly over cobblestones or eat, drink and keep yourself warm at the right moment, etc. There’s 1000 other things that go into winning bike races besides fucking functional threshold power, but in particular right now because of COVID and trainer world, and swifty land and all that stuff. Literally people are riding along looking at their watch per kilo, and that’s their focus. So what are they? I’ve, unfortunately coached several athletes who have fallen down this rabbit hole recently. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I need to eat less and go harder. Yeah. Yeah. Right, you know, because that’s the 50,000 foot view of watts per kilo. How do you tackle that? Sure, eat less and go and train harder. Sure,
1:16:19
sure. Guess what that does? Yeah, that destroys your athlete. You know, it’s interesting. You’re talking about bike racing. I am I’m really kind of getting slapped in the face by the idea that I’ve never really actually cared about bike racing. Hmm, I love that statement. Right. Right. And it seems almost kind of weird. Like, what? Really? Is that what the goal is we’re trying to win a bike race. That’s weird. Because I think that what I’ve always been intrigued by is just the sense of deep satisfaction. Yes,
Allen Lim 1:16:51
right. And you know, this feeling when you finish a really hard day, even if you didn’t, if you didn’t win because it was training in this way. That’s right, right?
1:17:00
That’s right. right to say that, you know, all we want to be are good trainers, no, but you get that deep satisfaction in any process that you try to master, you know, whether it is at a bike race or whether it is in your daily environment and your daily performance, right, whether it’s in the discipline that you bring to, you know, how you take care of yourself and how you take care of others. And I think it’s, it’s in in this route, where I realize as a coach that I really suck, when I’m not in person. Right. And that’s what maybe COVID has taught me more than anything, but it only works for me in terms of that, that that that sense of satisfaction when you’re actually there with the person. Right, right. Right.
Allen Lim 1:17:42
Having that human element that
1:17:44
that’s right, one on one connection, super hard to navigate during this period.
Allen Lim 1:17:48
I mean, you can get away with some of it through FaceTime or whatever. But yeah, even that’s, it’s just
1:17:53
not as it’s not as satisfying or it’s not as satiating and you know, to go back to contradiction again. There is this kind of sense of hunger and satiation. Hmm. And that this is a kind of beautiful strange hunt. We are all on.
Allen Lim 1:18:09
Yes. Yeah, I think you, you nailed it there. That’s funny you said that you don’t actually care that much about bike racing. I mean, I, I would also count myself in that category. Like, I’m the world’s biggest bike dork. But that means I love cycling. And I love cycling as a process that’s reading it as a process and a practice. That’s right, right. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. That’s right. So when I do things consciously, and I try to be attentive and be present in any given moment, it’s not something I’m only doing when I’m doing a five minute interval and I’m staring at my power meter. That’s right. It’s something I’m doing when I’m chopping onions. That’s something I’m doing when I’m yeah, whatever trying to when I’m meditating when I’m eating my food. Yeah, I’m not just jamming fuel down my throat hole so that I can Go do something more entertaining or watching Game of Thrones while I’m eating dinner like yeah, this is an experience that I’m taking nutrients into my body and yeah, making myself I’m refueling my body not just in terms of gasoline, but in terms of energy. That’s real lifeforce. That’s right. So I think.
1:19:21
And we all know that winning seldom reflects that level of discipline or effort or fitness sight.
Allen Lim 1:19:26
It’s so it’s such a cacophony of weird circumstances and bizarre stuff sometimes that really reads leads to people winning a bike race, like, right? How many examples of that do we see? Which is why that’s the speech you have to give someone when they’re like, Man, I’m not going very good right now. I got no power. Yeah, well, the race outcome was pre determined. We wouldn’t pin on numbers when we got metals.
1:19:49
So Danny pate probably had is one of the best guys that I’ve ever seen get interviewed at press conferences because he just hates being interviewed. He hates that. stupid questions that journalists would ask him when he was riding on the pro tour. Right. He won the stage of the tour, Missouri and was at the press conference after the win and a journalist asked Danny you know, you woke up this morning Did you? Did you feel like you had good legs? But what did you think your chances of winning this morning and he looks at this guy nice luck. Well, I woke up this morning and I thought to myself are 120 other guys in this race? So my chances are one and 100
Colby Pearce 1:20:28
such a great answer. Right. And the journalists went
1:20:34
that is true.
Allen Lim 1:20:37
Not really what I was looking for. That’s right. That’s right. Give me something juicy nugget here.
1:20:41
But but that were the facts.
Allen Lim 1:20:44
Yep. them the facts. Yeah. Yeah, I am guilty of not necessarily following a lot of bike races or watching them really in depth either. I don’t. I haven’t. How are you that I’m coaching in that race? Yeah, that’s then I’m very interested in it. Because, again, because I’m an investment and how that athletes doing not I mean, of course I want my athlete to do well in terms of placing, but I’m more interested in the post race report. That’s right. Give me the dirt like Yeah, what do you feel? What? How would you feel? how satisfied were you? Were you with the effort? Where you checked in? Were you? Did you feel connected with your body? Do you feel you’re making good power? Looks great. Did you execute? Well? Were you hampered by Team tactics? I mean, there’s so many variables at the World Tour level, like, yeah, how many race reports do you get from your guys? Yeah, I was breathing through my nose all day and had no chain but, you know, the director pulled me out of the break, or I was pinned, you know, to go to the car 15 times or whatever, you know, my teammate made two teammates made the break of 15. And that was at race over Yeah, whatever. So
1:21:43
Colby, I’m going to run beginning around June 1, maybe two month long training camp out of Boulder. Just an ongoing training camp for, you know, few athletes who just don’t have any events, trying to figure it out. And I think you’ll just be Like a two week on one week off cycle, uh huh, three or four structured, supported rides each week, and just see what kind of tempo we can create. And I kind of environment we can create with a handful of athletes, if you want to help out or join or have, you know, an athlete, you know, participate. I think it could be really cool because we still do need to create an environment and we’d be hard pressed to continue doing this by ourselves. Okay, so what safety and health in mind? Yep. What can we do?
Allen Lim 1:22:30
Right, so the riders be riding with duct tape over their nose and mouth.
Allen Lim 1:22:33
Haha. little bubbles.
Allen Lim 1:22:37
Yeah, awesome. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, if you have info on this camp, we’ll put it in the show notes. That’s right. Yeah, we can get people interested. We’ll see what that’s been generated. That sounds like a great idea. Yeah. You know, I mean, look, all coaches are in the same position right now. I have to just have a moment of gratitude because when this shit hit the fan, you know, people are kind of panicking and everyone’s going every which way Like, what’s gonna happen to my business? Yeah. And for me, I feel really grateful because, as it turns out when a global pandemic hits, people need coaching, like they really need coaching. Yeah, because now their whole seasons been flushed. Yeah, goals have been moved. I one guy was shooting for Paralympics in 2020. And now it’s 2021. Yeah, that’s, you know, these are serious life cycles of people like significant life events that have been moved back. I mean, that’s really what happened. Nathan Lawson and Alex house to like their seasons are completely nuked, and now the Fall is going to be crazy. That’s right. It’s going to be actually really crazy. Because all these all the major world tour events can be stacked on top of each other, which means World Tour teams can no longer be as selective about sending their top riders to the best the A races. That’s right, but they also can’t send their top resources. That’s right. If they have only one chef which the majority of World Tour teams do, or is that chef go does it go on tour or the Vuelta or the classics and that’s going to be a mess, right? So it’s going to stress teams. It’s going to stress the riders, riders are gonna have to make hard choices anyway. It’s it’s actually going to be kind of an interesting fall to watch some bike racing and see what happens because we’re going to see some unpredictable results. Yeah, based on we’re gonna have people who are fitter than hell, because they did a bunch of 12 hour rides on Strava That’s right, and swift and then we’re gonna have people who suck That’s right. They’ve been depressed or locked in a cage for three months. That’s forever all over the place all over the place. It’s gonna be kind of cool. Actually. I’m not to trivialize anyone’s struggle with this, but yeah, maybe we’ll watch them but yeah,
1:24:33
yes. Always look for the silver linings. Right.
Allen Lim 1:24:34
Right. Right, the medicine in the experience. So this is a cool idea, though. For you to have a camp I think people are really ready to start riding together. I think a lot of my athletes are present training by themselves. I am such a solo warrior. I’m like totally content to go. Listen to bods or zone out on my rhythm music and smash myself up a climb and that’s good for me, but I know. I’m a strange bird. He’s always been good at that. I’m backwards in that respect, you know, like most athletes inherently are better at racing other people with other people next to them. Yeah, I was the opposite. I was a better time trials. As a junior I had to learn how to race in a peloton. Yeah, I push myself deeper when there was someone next to me, because I was like, I had to I was constantly like, God, that guy didn’t seem like he’s going that hard. I don’t know what am I doing wrong? And then I blow up freak out. took me two years to figure that out. I remember showing up Raisa just didn’t quite get it but time trial, I can turn myself inside out. Colby it backwards. It’s all a beautiful dance man. And bright, isn’t it? beautiful dance.
1:25:34
It’s all God trying to work itself out. Yeah, you’re just moving the upper body. Then you learn to move the legs.
Allen Lim 1:25:42
And now hopefully I’m putting them together. That’s right. Did you know which is the muscle that joins the upper body and the lower body is also referred to as the muscle of the soul? Wow, I learned this recently because the deepest muscle in the body and has such a primal connection and also such a critical connection. to link the upper and lower body halves, yeah, right. Not cool. That makes sense. It’s the biggest source of imbalance in most athletes. Ah,
1:26:07
you know, so sad. Check it out. Oh, it’s all short. I gotta stretch out here. Yes. Yes.
Colby Pearce 1:26:15
Just like a cat every morning.
1:26:16
That’s right. That’s right.
Colby Pearce 1:26:18
Uh, Dr. Lin, tell us how people can find out more about you website Facebook, social beasties.
1:26:26
Best way to find out more about P is take me out to dinner. Yeah.
Colby Pearce 1:26:33
best answer?
1:26:35
Because I got to imagine that like everything online is bullshit, because I either wrote it and was trying to represent the best part of myself, or somebody else wrote it, who doesn’t actually know who I am, right. And much of this stuff is totally out of date anyways, because you write it who wants to update their resume or their biography of day or like, upload a new Facebook picture are people who do want to do that apparently, yeah. Other things do though. I don’t want to do that. That right? So I think the best way to get to know me is to knock on my door and give me some food. And I’ll answer any questions that you might have.
Colby Pearce 1:27:09
So what I want to address in the show notes,
1:27:11
that’s right, and we’ll get to know each other, you know, we’ll get to know each other, we’ll have that human interaction, yes.
Allen Lim 1:27:18
When things open up again, stop by scratch labs and try an idea when the office is going to be
1:27:24
I don’t have an idea. We had this discussion about it, we’re going to have further discussions about it, I think that there are going to be a number of different triggers, both biological triggers, as well as Social Triggers as well as individual work needs, you know, for example, our warehouse, guys are already there, but they’re there in a very open environment with you know, not a lot of other people there. Maybe our customer service people might need to get in because they work so closely with our warehouse team. So that might be the next trigger. Maybe there’s an antibody test, and we start letting people who have antibodies go back in Right, maybe testing becomes more robust, maybe a vaccine occurs, maybe we adapt some people to working from home for as long as they feel comfortable or want to, you know, this is further complicated by the fact that some, you know, of our employees have kids that require, you know, care, daily care, and then there isn’t square, right. So every single person is in a different situation. And we’re going to try to respect every individual’s needs. As much as possible, we’re really fortunate to be able to do so.
Allen Lim 1:28:35
Sounds like you’re right where most small businesses are, which is we don’t know what the fuck is going on.
1:28:39
We don’t. We have to, we have to take it kind of one person at a time. And we have to take it one day at a time with known contingencies that we have to go back and retreat, you know, so this whole idea of, you know, drop, drop and roll is kind of at the forefront of everyone’s mind, right? Yeah. Yeah, this is your like, little little earthquake drills. Yes. Poof. Okay. Yeah. Well, cool. Yeah. So but you know, we’re lucky that we’re still shipping and people are, are working from home. And I think we’re all anxious to be back together because there’s a lot more efficiency. When we are together. There’s also a lot of cool freedom in, you know, being able to work from home. It’s a double edged sword for sure. Right. I agree.
Allen Lim 1:29:31
Yeah, some things go really well and others not so much.
1:29:34
Yeah. And we’re all we’re all we’re all. We’re all battling that right now. Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s confusing.
Allen Lim 1:29:40
The other day I was trying to do some work on my cat literally jumped on my desk and she was flicking my mouse with her tail back and forth and the mouse was moving and like opening random emails and stuff. And then touching your nose. I have one of those lamps on my desk that’s like that you touch it to make it go to three different intensities are off. So she kept turning the lamp on off, you know whether No, I was like, okay, we’re just gonna I’m just gonna hang on watch this for a minute. On many I’m sure you know there are people with toddlers who are like, hurling stuff at their head while they’re trying to business calls. can only imagine but
1:30:12
Colby, how has your life been? And what are your plans for the summer?
Allen Lim 1:30:17
Well, my life’s been good on the whole, you know, like we talked about manifesting a pause button. I feel like I needed that. Yeah, I’ve been able to dig deep into some of my check studies, staying with Paul check at the check academies in San Diego and taking some holistic Lifestyle coaching courses and some programming courses with him advanced program design, programming design, which has been great. It’s, you know, I’ve been coaching for 20 years, but sometimes you need that, that educational stimulus to help you get a fresh look, look at things to refresh lens. Yeah. And it’s caused me to go through and rewrite a lot of my programs and think critically about the way I give some of my athletes load in particular in regards to strength and conditioning. Yeah, that’s where a lot of Paul’s stuff is his focus. But even in the programming I give them on the bike, it’s been challenging to a degree. So that’s been really rewarding for me and working hard on the podcast and this has given me some time to do that and get this up and running which has been great. I’m starting to see clients in the fit lab again, little bit by bit screening um, you know, we’re using massive needed I’m wiping everything down the usual precautions using an air filter in combination with an essential oil diffuser. Yeah, so that’s kind of my standard practice but so far so good. We’ve all been healthy. My daughter was studying in France this spring and Provence, she had to come home of course, because she said Wellesley in her program like all study abroad programs got can so she’s been battling we actually had to upgrade and get fiber optic because my wife’s been taking so many classes online and then I was at home and and Chloe was online and the internet was smelting down Well, we had to really I mean, some bandwidth here, hit the button. So that was a worthy investment. But as far as the summer goes, you know one point I was thinking like Grab all the stuff maybe steamboat or something more as more of a participation level for me just gotten enjoy and garden see what happens but that’s all gone now. So I was contemplating the idea of doing an interesting just on my own terms for fun well that’s pretty cool. It is trending right now it feels like something I just want to tick the box on.
1:32:20
I’m sure there are people right now doing yoga in
Allen Lim 1:32:22
Boulder This is Wednesday literally Kevin nickel is doing one on Magnolia today it’s a thing I think everyone will have done it sooner or later but I’ve never ridden my bike 15 hours so I figure I got to do it. That’s I think it’s 17 laps up super flag.
1:32:36
Why can you imagine
Allen Lim 1:32:37
so it’s starting you know at five in the morning and taking lights on both ends of the day for sure. And wow, Ninja about food and water and stuff. So now I’m I’m, I’m reasonably fit right now but in a very generalist way and lifting weights doing kettlebells some riding some writing hard, not a lot of volume. So I’m a good couple of months away before I could handle something like that without an absolute blast. Calling me Yeah. But I think that might be a summer goal for me just for fun to like build up to that. So if I participate some of your camps and help out, I can gain some fitness.
1:33:09
Yes, please do get my team to have you there.
Allen Lim 1:33:12
That’d be awesome. Thank you. Yes. Sweet. Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Allen, for joining us on cycling alignment.
1:33:19
Thank you for having me. Thanks for for the wonderful conversation. We had a lot of deep topics here, man. We did. We went.
Allen Lim 1:33:28
We went deep. We went sideways, we went up. It’s hopefully people find that enlightening, or at least entertaining. And we kept the F bombs down to around a dozen or so. That’s right. That’s right.
1:33:39
So it’s it’s
Allen Lim 1:33:42
it’s a word that brings people together.
Allen Lim 1:33:45
Right. As you said, You can’t remember the last time you told someone to eff off but it’s right. We use it to this right to unite people. Yeah, in a common way. Yeah. And it’s I think the word for what it’s worth. I think it’s probably the definition is evolved. That’s right. It’s you I mean 30 years ago.
1:34:02
Whoa, get a mouthful. So for that, no work that way. But this has been freaking awesome.
Allen Lim 1:34:09
Thanks to the flippin interview dude. Thank you for listening to the cycling and alignment podcast. I hope you enjoy today’s show. If you have some feedback about the show, you can email me at cycling in alignment at basket
1:34:27
labs.com.
Colby Pearce 1:34:28
We will also put the link to this email in the show notes and some links to some socials in case you want to hit us up there. We appreciate your positive feedback if you like the show, if you didn’t like it, well, that’s okay. And let me know about that.
1:34:42
Disclaimer. Listen up monkeys.
Colby Pearce 1:34:47
The ramblings on this podcast
1:34:49
represent
Colby Pearce 1:34:50
me and me alone. They’re not indicative of the thoughts or opinions of fast labs or Chris case or Trevor Connor or anyone else
1:35:00
Also
Colby Pearce 1:35:01
none of this advice is intended to
1:35:03
prescribe or diagnose
Colby Pearce 1:35:05
anything, not a doctor. Don’t play one on the internet. So, just want to be clear on those points.
1:35:11
Thanks for listening
